Following a political uproar in which Conservatives accused opposition New Democrats of authoring the tweets that made claims about Toews's personal life, the original account on the social networking site has now been deleted.

A message posted before the micro-blogger's account closed on Friday evening said, "I am shutting down before any other innocent people are targeted. Please keep up the fight against #C30 Canada."

Vikileaks gained notoriety this week as part of the protests against the federal government's new online surveillance bill, C-30.

'I set up this project to make a point, not ensnare innocent people in a government witch hunt.'—Anonymous Twitter account Vikileaks30

Critics have raised concerns about potential privacy issues with the legislation, which would offer police easier access to data about web surfers by requiring internet service providers to surrender some client information to authorities without a warrant.

Under a text field reserved for biographical information on Twitter, the anonymous account user wrote: "Vic wants to know about you. Let's get to know Vic."

The Vikileaks account then proceeded to post a string of more than 90 tweets taking jabs at the minister and his home life, including alleged quotations from affidavits from Toews's divorce. None of the claims has been verified.

The minister himself responded on his Twitter feed that he would not "get involved in this kind of gutter politics."